Saturday, September 7, 2013

Dixie Diary 9: The Hands of Strangers

Block 9

The Hands of Strangers

8" Version

A 12" version
with a 1" frame, set on point

By Sandi Brothers.

A nine
patch split in the center symbolizes the break in the Morgan family's life as
Sarah dwells on the loss of her home. In the
fall of 1862 Sarah injured her back in a carriage accident and was unable to
walk for months.

Like Sarah, Mary Custis Lee used a wheeled chair, as they were often called at the time. The General's wife had rheumatoid arthritis.

Confined to a chair or bedridden and in pain, Sarah's New
Year began with rumors that a Union officer was living in the Morgan's Baton Rouge house.

Union soldiers occupied fine southern houses from

the Lee Family's Arlington in Northern Virginia, shown here in 1864,

down to New Orleans. Library of Congress.

January
4, 1863, Linwood, East Feliciana Parish

"Yankees
do inhabit it, a Yankee colonel and his wife. They say they look strangely at
home on our front gallery, pacing up and down. . . . And a stranger and a
Yankee occupies our father's place at the table where he presided for
thirty-one years. . . .

"And the old lamp that lighted up so many eager,
laughing faces around the dear old table night after night; that with its great
beaming eye watched us one by one as we grew up and left our home; that
witnessed every parting and every meeting; by which we sang, read, talked,
danced, and made merry; the lamp that Hal asked for as soon as he beheld the
glittering chandeliers of the new innovation, gas; the lamp that all agreed
should go to me among other treasures, and be cased in glass to commemorate the
old days, - our old lamp has passed into the hands of strangers who neither
know nor care for its history. And mother's bed (which, with the table and
father's little ebony stand, alone remained uninjured) belongs now to a Yankee
woman!"

Women posed with their sewing and an oil lamp.

They seem to be adding decorative tape to a skirt,

a military look popular during the Civil War.

Sarah's old lamp was replaced by a gas chandelier before the War.

Cutting a 12" Block

A Cut 1
light and 1 dark square 6-7/8".

Cut each into 2 triangles with 1 cut. You need 1 light & 1 dark.

B Cut 4
medium rectangles 3-1/2" x 6-1/2".

C Cut 4
dark squares 3-1/2".

Cutting an 8" Block

A Cut 1 light and 1 dark square 4-7/8".

Cut each into 2 triangles with 1 cut. You need 1 light & 1 dark.

B Cut 4 medium rectangles 2-1/2" x 4-1/2".

C Cut 4 dark squares 2-1/2".

Optional
applique:

Applique a
star or a heart after piecing.

Go back to the
January 5, 2013 post to see a JPG with the heart and the star.

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